


Seen her dancing in the sand

by melannen



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Marvel
Genre: Family, Fluff, I guess I just write deadpool kidfic now, Kid Fic, M/M, Summers family bullshit, Teenagers, Time Travel, fourth wall play, never attempt to read up on Summers backstory my god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 06:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15334410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: The Summers-Wilson family have ice cream and then lasagna. Possibly they have a problem with doing things out of order.





	Seen her dancing in the sand

Colossus said "Wade" in that careful tone of voice that meant Wade was in trouble for something again and he was going to get a scolding. He didn't have any idea what for - he hadn't been poking at Xavier's Order of Chastity more than usual lately - but that was fine, he was always up for a good Colossus scolding.

Wade felt his toes curl and shifted the phone closer to his ear. "What's up, sugarpie?"

"Can you tell me," he said cautiously, "Why we have found angry teenage mutant who is using a bank account in your name to buy very many guns?"

Wade sat up very straight and dropped his feet off the coffee table. "Fuck! Yes!" he said. "I knew that was a good idea!"

Colossus said, "That does not answer my question. Also does not relieve my concerns. In any way."

"Did you ask _them_ why they were using a bank account in my name to buy very many guns?"

"She says her papa gave her the account information and told her to use it in emergency. This is not reassuring either."

A girl! It was a little girl! Wade's heart immediately melted into a small puddle of pure sugar syrup. "What's her name?"

Colossus sighed. "She says her name is Priss Summers-Wilson. Wade. She has healing factor and metal hands. What have you _done_?"

"Nothing. Yet!" he added cheerfully. "Where are you? The mansion? I'll come pick her up."

"She says her papa said never to go with strange men to their homes and will not come to mansion. We are in Riverbank Park in Newark."

 

They weren't hard to find when he got there. Yellow leather tended to stand out. So did massive hunks of manly steel, even in the Ironbound. They were sitting around a picnic table near the playground, a larger group than he'd expected.

"Logan!" he said as he walked up. "They needed to call you in to take her down? I'm very proud," he told the strange girl who must have been Priss. "Or did we just have extra money in the budget we needed to use up?"

Logan grunted in his general direction.

"They didn't _take me down_ ," she said. "They arrested my weapons dealer, after it took me, like, two days to find one, and then they bought me," she looked down at the cone in her hand, " _ice cream_. This stuff is what you used to spend hours going on about?"

Wade hopped up onto the table beside her. "You don't like it?"

"It's... cold." She took another bite. She had messy brown hair that looked like it had been repeatedly hacked off with a combat knife, a black hoodie, jeans, fingerless leather gloves that showed metal at the tips, a ratty leather rucksack, and a matching fanny pack. She was maybe fourteen, and skinny; the familiar look of an adolescent running on fear more than food. He could see Nate already in the shape of her jawbone and her eyes, and also how short she was, but she definitely had his cheekbones. Wade was in love. Neg was sitting at the other end of the table, very definitely not looking at her.

"Wade," Colossus said, arms crossed. "Explain."

"Why were you tracking my bank accounts?" he asked.

"We aren't," he said. "We're tracking endangered mutants. Professor Xavier saw something odd about this one."

" _Should_ be tracking your bank accounts," Logan muttered.

"And we couldn't find any record of her existing before two days ago, so instead we tracked the bank account she was using. To buy guns."

"Why the guns?" Wade asked her.

She shrugged. "You told me to lie low."

"'Lie low' means 'buy two automatic weapons and a bag of high-capacity magazines from a Russian mobster'?" Logan asked.

"Fair enough," Wade said, "It's what I would have done. So who traced the account for you guys?"

"Hi Wade!" Yukio said from behind him, nearly startling him out of his skin.

"Hi Yukio!" he cooed, turning around.

"I found Cable!" she said, waving the bright pink boba tea she was holding.

"I see that!" Wade answered, and waved to Nate, who was stalking across the playground after her. "Hi Nate!" he cooed in the same voice.

"Just to head things off, you aren't allowed to break up the cutest couple in the entire Marvel universe," he added to Priss while Nate was catching up. "I know they _are_ adorable, but I have to draw the line somewhere, and anyway, Negasonic Blackletter Cabbagepatch there is practically my stepdaughter, it would be weird and quasi-incestuous."

Neg rolled her eyes. Priss looked like she almost wanted to laugh, but she bit down on it and said, "Not here for girlfriend stuff anyway."

"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," Wade said.

"Wade, what have you done?" Nate asked.

"Why is everyone acting like this is my fault?" Wade says. "What it looks like to me is that I'm the only one who tried to make sure she had food and clothing."

"And guns," Logan added.

"And guns," Wade said. "You deadbeat," he added in Nate's general direction.

"Fine. Wade, what is _going on_?" Nate said.

"She hasn't said. But I'm assuming she's our daughter from a post-apocalyptic alternate future," he said. "That's who I set up that account for."

Priss shrugged. "More or less."

"You set up a $500,000 emergency fund in case our daughter from a post-apocalyptic alternate future needed it," Cable restated.

"I'm sorry," Wade said, hands on his hips. " _You're_ the one finding this unlikely? Is this your homophobia thing again?"

"Wade--" Nate started.

"Where did you even _get_ $500,000, Wilson?" Logan asked.

"Murdering people," Wade said. "What? I know you've joined Xavier's holy orders and don't believe in worldly wealth anymore, but did you forget what 'mercenary' means? I've been setting aside half of every paycheck for the last year. I figured once Nate and I started hooking up, there was at least even odds we'd have an alternate-timeline kid or space clone or something drop out of the sky eventually - that's just something you deal with when you date a Summers. And you have to start saving early with kids these days. Ness and I went to a seminar! I know all about 529 plans and stuff!" he ended, since all of them but Priss were looking at him with varying levels of disbelief. Priss was finishing her ice cream, biting off small pieces of cone with a thoughtful expression.

"We're not 'hooking up'," Nate said eventually.

"What do you call Arbor Day then?"

"We hooked up _one time_. And there's a far cry between getting drunk, crying about trees and then fucking, and _having a kid together_."

"He did the crying about trees, I did the fucking," Wade reassured them all sotto voce. Neg made a gagging noise. Yukio cooed. Priss didn't look up from the last inch of waffle cone.

" _Anyway_ ," Nate added, "Yukio said you set the account up less than a week after we met."

"You stayed for _me_ ," Wade said, staring soulfully into his eyes. Through the mask. Into his one eye and his one techno-organic thing. "And then I learned you were a Summers. I know narrative inevitability when it's crashing in my apartment."

"You're crashing in _my_ apartment," Nate said, "You blew yours up, remember?"

"My point exactly!" Wade said. "So, Priss, you ready to come home? Any supply caches or anything you need to clear out first? I'll bake a lasagna."

"No," she said. "I'm good. Everything I need's here. Except the guns, but they gave them to the cops."

"Eh, don't worry about it. You can have some of my spares when we get home. I've got plenty."

"Wilson, we can't just release an endangered mutant teenager into your custody," Logan said.

"Oh yeah? She's _my daughter_ ," Wade said. "Wait, I forgot, you people kidnap children all the time. Ooh, are we going to have a big heroes-vs-heroes crossover event fight? I expect you to be on my side, Yukio."

"Of course, Wade!" Yukio said.

Logan looked around himself, shifty-eyed. Wade could hear him doing the odds on that fight in his pointy-haired little head. Wade and whatever Priss's full powers were vs. Logan and Colossus and probably Neg, with Yukio and Nate as wild cards. Wade didn't think he would actually start something in the middle of the park, but you could never be sure with Logan.

"Or," Wade said, "I guess I could finally call up my friend at the Daily Bugle and tell them all about that time you people decided I would make a great cellmate for a fourteen-year-old orphan in supervillain gen pop, without benefit of trial, and let the court of public opinion figure out who is better at making child custody decisions."

"Let him take her if she wants to go, Logan," Colossus said.

"Bub--"

Colossus shook his head. "He is surprisingly good with kids. And this way, we don't have to explain any details to Scott."

 

"Dopinder my man!" Wade said when they made it back to the cab. He shoved Cable into shotgun so he could sit in the back with his daughter. _His daughter_. She was the _best_. "This is my daughter, Priss! I'm very proud of her, she can field-strip an AK-47 in - how long does it take you to field-strip an AK-47?"

"30 seconds," she said.

"Hmm. We'll have to work on that."

"You wouldn't let me practice enough with your slug-thrower guns, they're valuable antiques. I'm much better with BFGs."

"Of course you'd take after Nate. We'll _definitely_ work on that."

Dopinder twisted around to look at her. "Hello, Miss Priss," he said. "I am very honored to be given the opportunity to meet you."

"If you're going to call me Miss, you have to use Priscilla."

"Priscilla?" Nate said. "Pretty name."

"Papa always told me I was named for _you_ ," she said.

"I won't even try to understand Wade's mind well enough to figure that one out."

"He said it's because you're cranky, mostly made of metal, and like hanging around with crossdressers."

"I do like hanging around with crossdressers," Nate said, which was exactly the sort of thing Nate said sometimes and then _never followed through on_.

"So, Priscilla," Wade said real quick before it could get awkward, "Why'd I send you back, anyway?"

"Don't interrogate her, Wade," Nate said. "Time travel's tough enough without dealing with the family. Give her a little time to get settled."

Priscilla shrugged, and adjusted the backpack on her lap.

"Fine. Then how was _your_ day, dear?"

"Mission," Nate said. Apparently that was all they got.

Wade ended up spending most of the ride telling them the plot of the _Empty Nest_ episode he'd been watching when Colossus called, even though it turned out Priss knew the plot better than he did. So he'd clearly done _something_ right raising her.

 

With an automatic weapon in her hands, her shoulders came down from around her ears for the first time since he'd met her. He hadn't fully realized how tense she'd been with the X-Dorks until he saw how far she'd relax once she felt a little safer.

Wade was sticking a frozen lasagna in the oven, in his favorite frilly apron, while Priss sat at the kitchen table, demonstrating practiced assembly and disassembly with half their arsenal. Wade liked to think that if he and Ness'd had kids, they would have made sure they at least got them through high school before they had the kind of trauma disorders that made them treat guns like security blankets. But he would've known she was a Summers while he was raising her, and known the sort of thing she'd have to expect. Not even mentioning whatever vaguely-defined grimdark future timeline she'd come from - they had three or four already in movie canon alone.

"You know, I've bunked down with Papa in much worse conditions than this," she called down the apartment hallway as she snapped a magazine into place.

"Yes, but you shouldn't have to," Nate called back. He'd been changing the sheets in his room so she'd have a place to sleep. He dropped a wad of bedding vaguely near the front door and then sat down beside her. "Anyway, do they have Mexican takeout when you grew up?"

She frowned. "No."

"Then I'm not convinced you _have_ bunked down in worse conditions than Wade's bedroom."

"Also fair," Wade said, sliding Nate a beer and Priss a coke.

"I can take the couch," she said.

"You _definitely_ don't want to take the couch," Nate said.

She frowned. "Why not?"

"Arbor day," Wade said. "For all we know, that's where you were conceived!"

She looked like she was about to say something then turned back to the guns. He frowned at her. She was hiding something. He didn't doubt for a second that she _was_ his - that'd been part of the idea of setting up the bank account codes in the first place, and besides, she had clearly spent long enough around Deadpool to take him for granted, even with the mask off. But there was _something_ she was hiding. Call it dad instincts. He watched her fingers moving dexterously around the gun parts.

"I'll take the couch," Nate said. "I _have_ bunked down in worse places."

"So, what are your actual mutant powers?" Wade asked suddenly.

"What?" she and Nate both asked at the same time.

"You forgot to keep your fingertips metal," he pointed out. They'd faded to the point that it just looked like she had interesting taste in nail polish. "Besides, healing factor and metal hands was way too on-the-nose. My healing factor's an induced mutation and Nate's metal's an infection. The X-gene's pure narrative logic, but it's not fucking _Lamarckian_. So what is it really? Telepathy? Some kind of illusion power?"

She shot a glance between them, thought it over, and finally said, "I copy other mutants' powers. But only when I'm near them, and not for very long."

"That's why Logan was there!"

"What?" Nate asked.

"So she could copy his healing factor and pretend she got it from me."

"Wade, that's not how causality works."

"Even with time travel?"

"Especially with time travel."

"Huh."

"Anyway, I can't control it very well," Priss said. "I wasn't around other mutants much, especially after Papa and I had to go into hiding away from Mom, so I never got in the practice you said I needed."

"Here's a question," Wade said. "Why is _Nate_ Mom and I'm only Papa? Did he call dibs or something?"

"Cable's not Mom," she said, and looked over at Nate through her lashes. "Sorry. I'm sure you're cool and all, Papa had lots of stories, but you're, like, _super_ dead in my future. Mom's Stryfe."

Nate breathed out. "Fuck."

"Papa said since he couldn't be with you he went looking for Mom, and he's never regretted it, because he got me out of it. But we spent a lot of time hiding from Mom after he realized it wasn't safe. That's why he sent me back. Mom was going to destroy our entire timeline, and Papa said I was the only thing in it worth saving. Papa," she told Nate with a smirk, "Is a total sap sometimes."

"I'm figuring that out," Nate murmured.

"Who," said Wade, "Is Stryfe?"

Priss looked at Nate, then back. "You haven't told him about Stryfe yet?"

"It never came up," Nate said.

Just then, the microwave dinged. "Hold that thought," Wade said, and stood up. "No talking about work at family dinner. And no guns at the table when we're eating."

He laid out three plates - well, a plate, a saucer, and a hastily-washed lid from Chinese takeout - while they cleared the weaponry away, and Priss thought neither of them noticed her sneaking a small holdout pistol under her hoodie, like either of them cared. His guns were her guns, and it wasn't like he didn't have at least two concealed on his person.

"How did we even have a frozen lasagna?" Nate asked.

Wade set it on the table and untied his apron. "Domino left her groceries in the back of Dopinder's cab last week, right before he picked me up." He paused, and looked over his family, sitting at the kitchen table all ready for dinner. A time-displaced mercenary and the daughter of his future self by someone who was presumably a relative of the mercenary's. His _family_. "I guess I'm just... lucky."

 

Priss was yawning by nine and by ten was tucked asleep into Nate's bed in a clean pair of his shorts and a t-shirt, gun and knife securely under the pillow (with the safety on and a buckled sheath, Wade knew about childproofing). Early for a teenager, but she was probably still time-lagged or something, and who knew where she'd slept the last two nights. Or how long before that it had been since she'd felt safe.

Wade stood in the doorway and watched her sleep for a few minutes, because he couldn't help it. She had one hand curled under the pillow, clutching the knife, he bet, if she took after him. She was absolutely nothing like he'd ever imagined. She was perfect.

"Yeah, parenting's like that," Cable said softly from behind him.

Wade shut the door silently and turned. Cable looked - he looked the way he looked at Hope's teddy bear, except only a little bit sad instead of a lot. "Do you mind that she's not yours after all?" he asked.

"You really expected her to be, didn't you?"

"It seemed really fucking unlikely I'd ever have slept with the only other Summers I know of in this universe. And so far this continuity seems at least slightly less messed up than 616."

Nate ignored that, as usual. "Did you think it would matter? It doesn't matter. Especially if she's Stryfe's. But it wouldn't anyway."

Wade flopped down on the couch and looked up at him. Weird to look up at him. Nice, though. "So," he said. "Who's Stryfe?" He knew the general outlines of how all that went, but the details sometimes went all wobbly right when he needed them.

"It's a short and impressively stupid story," Nate said, and dropped down beside him. Wade cuddled up. It seemed like the sort of story that might need cuddling. Nate didn't stab him, which was definitely a plus. "When I was a baby, the people taking care of me was afraid this might kill me." He tapped some metal fingers on Wade's thigh, to demonstrate. "So they took a blood sample, and cloned a spare. He didn't have the same advantages growing up that I did, so he didn't end up with my sparkling personality and unerring ethical sense."

Wade processing this. "So, what you're saying is that Future Me hooked up with your evil twin after you were dead and it was too late to get with you?"

"Sounds like it," Nate said.

"Wow," Wade said. "Is he taller than you? Does he have a beard?"

Nate snorted. "Not last I saw. I thought I'd taken care of him before I came back. I guess not, if he's what she's running from. My fault."

Wade rolled his eyes. "Not your fault. For all we know she's from some completely different alternate future you've never heard of."

Nate grunted.

"Told you. It doesn't matter. She's mine anyway, if she needs me."

"I can't believe we have a teenage kid and we only hooked up once," Wade said. "Soo soap-opera."

"Did you want to hook up more," Nate said.

"What?" Wade said.

He shrugged. "You always change the subject when I try to bring it up, I thought you didn't want to."

"You... you... obviously I want to have more sex with you!"

"All you had to do was ask," Nate said, and stood up. He held his hands down to Wade. "Anyway, I hope you didn't think I was _actually_ planning to sleep on this couch the whole time she's here. I have some standards."

Wade took his hands and pulled himself up. "What about the Mexican takeout issue?"

"I can use my powers to shut off my sense of smell," he said deadpan.

"Really?" Wade said, distracted for a second by the possibilities. "Can you shut off your other senses?"

"That's for you to find out. But I can't soundproof the room without having a better idea of the limits of Priss's powers," he replied, "so we'll just have to figure out how to keep you quiet for once."

"Whoa," Wade said. "Are we going to have _parent sex_? With the kid in the next room? _Super_ kinky."

"You'll get used to it," Nate said.

Some time later, Nate rubbed his face on Wade's shoulder and muttered, "Anyway, there's no shame in crying about trees. You can't understand what _green_ really means until you've lived without it."

"I know," Wade said, half-asleep already. "You told me. In detail." He ran a hand over the edge of the metal on the back of Nate's shoulder and added, "But holidays were me and Ness's thing. Crying about growing things can be ours."

"Deal," Nate said.

**Author's Note:**

> 616 comics-verse fact of the day: Comics!Cable does in fact have an evil clone named Stryfe who future Wade joins up with after Nate is dead.


End file.
